What is The PinstaFuture: Behavioral & Intelligent Advertising

After the announcement of Pinterest and Instagram jumping on the ‘promoted post’ bandwagon, a refreshing air of relief has met the feelings of myself amongst other avid social media users. Why so? One would be forgiven for comparing the ‘before’ and ‘after’ shots of the Facebook experience and arguing that today’s visual newsfeed bombards us with an array of unwanted adverts which have intruded on our social and personal space. But will these other two social behemoths’ new advertising endeavors be just as intrusive? Nope!

According to Lauren Indvik, Pinterest’s promoted pins are to work much like Twitter’s Promoted Tweets and Facebook’s Promoted Posts, the only difference, and relieving element, is that these posts are to be contextualized – such that a search for “Halloween” might promote a post concerning the latest hip Halloween costume like Ylvis’ Fox costume – What does the fox say anyway? Additionally, as seen in the graphic above, unlike Facebook and Twitter, promoted pins will blend seamlessly in with the rest of the regular posts – So advertisers should be ready to spruce up their Pinterest game!

Instagram, the ultimate visual community that thrives off pictorial beauty, is set to roll out promoted ads “in the next couple of months”. The initial reaction of this announcement was not met agreeably, such that 43% of surveyed participants on Mashable are “disappointed” and 17% are “furious”. Much like Pinterest, however, the relieving part to all of this was announced on the mobile app’s official blog:

“We’ll focus on delivering a small number of beautiful, high-quality photos and videos from a handful of brands that are already great members of the Instagram community.” – #InstagramNews

Facebook recently announced losing up to 1.4 million users – as the population of new and emerging networks appreciates; millenials are migrating from one network to another. Although it is the most popular social platform with 1.15 billion users, its “move fast & break things” mantra is not shared across the socialsphere. It is relieving, from a consumer’s perspective, to see advertisements become context-oriented and personalized to enhance the users’ experience. Only time will tell, however, how effective these ads will prove to be.

Which brand will have the most success in delivering “beautiful, high-quality photos” to Instagram?

Leon McLean is a Project Manager and Trainer at SayItSocial, focusing on digital marketing strategy and project development as well as live, virtual and eLearning training initiatives. Please connect with Leon on...
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